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Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Last Class
Read and Discuss:
“NeoRealism at the Infiniplex,” John Weir
Writing Exercise:
Describe the Sound of Your Own Voice
Read, Aloud:
The opening pages of Alex Gilvarry’s From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant
The opening pages of Clair Messud’s The Woman Upstairs
The opening pages of Edward P. Jones’ The Known World
The opening pages of Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen
END.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Thirteen
Read and Discuss:
“Redeployment,” Phil Klay
Exercise:
Describe an animal.
Read, Aloud:
“Grazing Horses,” Kay Ryan
“Peek-a-Moose,” Mary Reufle
Perspectives on Animals
Listen to:
“Cat ‘n’ Mouse,” John Abercrombie
“Lazy Bird,” John Coltrane
Read, Aloud:
“The Moose,” Elizabeth Bishop
From narrow provinces of fish and bread and tea, home of the long tides where the bay leaves the sea twice a day and takes the herrings long rides, where if the river enters or retreats in a wall of brown foam depends on if it meets the bay coming in, the bay not at home; where, silted red, sometimes the sun sets facing a red sea, and others, veins the flats’ lavender, rich mud in burning rivulets; on red, gravelly roads, down rows of sugar maples, past clapboard farmhouses and neat, clapboard churches, bleached, ridged as clamshells, past twin silver birches, through late afternoon a bus journeys west, the windshield flashing pink, pink glancing off of metal, brushing the dented flank of blue, beat-up enamel; down hollows, up rises, and waits, patient, while a lone traveller gives kisses and embraces to seven relatives and a collie supervises. Goodbye to the elms, to the farm, to the dog. The bus starts. The light grows richer; the fog, shifting, salty, thin, comes closing in. Its cold, round crystals form and slide and settle in the white hens’ feathers, in gray glazed cabbages, on the cabbage roses and lupins like apostles; the sweet peas cling to their wet white string on the whitewashed fences; bumblebees creep inside the foxgloves, and evening commences. One stop at Bass River. Then the Economies— Lower, Middle, Upper; Five Islands, Five Houses, where a woman shakes a tablecloth out after supper. A pale flickering. Gone. The Tantramar marshes and the smell of salt hay. An iron bridge trembles and a loose plank rattles but doesn’t give way. On the left, a red light swims through the dark: a ship’s port lantern. Two rubber boots show, illuminated, solemn. A dog gives one bark. A woman climbs in with two market bags, brisk, freckled, elderly. “A grand night. Yes, sir, all the way to Boston.” She regards us amicably. Moonlight as we enter the New Brunswick woods, hairy, scratchy, splintery; moonlight and mist caught in them like lamb’s wool on bushes in a pasture. The passengers lie back. Snores. Some long sighs. A dreamy divagation begins in the night, a gentle, auditory, slow hallucination.... In the creakings and noises, an old conversation —not concerning us, but recognizable, somewhere, back in the bus: Grandparents’ voices uninterruptedly talking, in Eternity: names being mentioned, things cleared up finally; what he said, what she said, who got pensioned; deaths, deaths and sicknesses; the year he remarried; the year (something) happened. She died in childbirth. That was the son lost when the schooner foundered. He took to drink. Yes. She went to the bad. When Amos began to pray even in the store and finally the family had to put him away. “Yes ...” that peculiar affirmative. “Yes ...” A sharp, indrawn breath, half groan, half acceptance, that means “Life’s like that. We know it (also death).” Talking the way they talked in the old featherbed, peacefully, on and on, dim lamplight in the hall, down in the kitchen, the dog tucked in her shawl. Now, it’s all right now even to fall asleep just as on all those nights. —Suddenly the bus driver stops with a jolt, turns off his lights. A moose has come out of the impenetrable wood and stands there, looms, rather, in the middle of the road. It approaches; it sniffs at the bus’s hot hood. Towering, antlerless, high as a church, homely as a house (or, safe as houses). A man’s voice assures us “Perfectly harmless....” Some of the passengers exclaim in whispers, childishly, softly, “Sure are big creatures.” “It’s awful plain.” “Look! It’s a she!” Taking her time, she looks the bus over, grand, otherworldly. Why, why do we feel (we all feel) this sweet sensation of joy? “Curious creatures,” says our quiet driver, rolling his r’s. “Look at that, would you.” Then he shifts gears. For a moment longer, by craning backward, the moose can be seen on the moonlit macadam; then there’s a dim smell of moose, an acrid smell of gasoline.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Twelve
Read and Discuss:
“The Girl on the Plane,” Mary Gaitskill
Read, Aloud:
“Snow,” Mary Ruefle
“Snow for Wallace Stevens,” Terrance Hayes
The opening pages to Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill
Perspectives on Snow
Listen to:
“Snow,” Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Snowblind,” Black Sabbath
“Friends of Snowman,” Nels Cline
Read, Aloud:
“Snow,” Frederick Seidel
Snow is what it does. It falls and it stays and it goes. It melts and it is here somewhere. We all will get there.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Eleven
Read and Discuss:
“Baader-Meinhof,” Don DeLillo
Look At:
Gerhard Ricther’s Baader-Meinhof painting cycle: https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/paintings/photo-paintings/baader-meinhof-56
Writing Exercise:
Describe What You Hear, All That Hides in the Silence
Read, Aloud:
“Study of Loneliness,” Czesław Miłosz
“Munich, Winter 1973 (for Y.S.),” James Baldwin
The opening pages of Sarah Gerard’s Binary Star
Perspectives on Silence
Listen to:
“(silence),” Ciccone Youth
“The Sounds of Silence,” Simon and Garfunkel
Read, Aloud:
“Silence”
Kay Ryan
Silence is not snow.
It cannot grow
deeper. A thousand years
of it are thinner
than paper. So
we must have it
all wrong
when we feel trapped
like mastodons.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Ten:
Read and Discuss:
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” Gabriel García Márquez
Writing Exercise:
Invent and Describe Three Different Types of Angel
Read, Aloud:
“Consorting with Angels,” Anne Sexton
“Hole in the Wall,” Etgar Keret
Perspectives on Angels:
Listen to:
“Angel Wings,” Art Pepper
“On Angels,” Donald Barthelme
“Angel,” Oxbow
Read, Aloud:
“Wings”
Albert Goldbarth
I always wondered why they call them wings.
—Perhaps because somebody always waited in shadow
in them, with a rope.
With a rope like a great braided nerve,
and while some sweet singing or bloody melee
completely filled the central light, this person
would raise or lower the god.
*
It’s summer. Hard summer; the land enameled.
I find the bird already half-dismantled
by ants—the front half. It’s flying
steadily into the other world, so needs to be this still.
Do I mumble? yes. Do I actually pray? yes.
Yes, but not for the bird. When we love enough
people a bird is a rehearsal.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Nine:
Read and Discuss:
“Lobster Dinner,” Alexandra Kleeman
Writing Exercise: Describe the Place Where You Sleep
Read, Aloud:
“My Dream Everything,” Todd Colby
“3:00 (for David),” James Baldwin
The opening pages to Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights
Perspectives on Sleep
Listen to:
“Dopesmoker,” Sleep
"While My Lady Sleeps,” John Coltrane
Read, Aloud:
“Sleep,” Mary Ruefle
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Eight:
Read and Discuss:
“Views of My Father Weeping,” Donald Barthelme
Writing Exercise:
Write About Your Father.
Read, Aloud:
“The Clothing of My Death,” Todd Colby
“Guava,” by Etgar Keret
Perspectives on Body
Liston to:
“Body and Soul,” Frank Sinatra
“Untitled,” Body/Head
Read, Aloud:
“Body,” Czesław Miłosz
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Seven:
Read and Discuss:
“A Brief Encounter with the Enemy,” Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Read, Aloud:
The opening chapter to When Skateboards Will Be Free, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
“The Gunshot in the Parking Lot,” Albert Goldbarth
"Things,” Lisel Mueller
Writing Exercise:
One Page Describing Your Wallet
Perspectives on Objects:
Listen:
“Object,” The Cure
“My Favorite Things,” John Coltrane
“Stuff,” Miles Davis
Read, Aloud:
“A Bowl of Spaghetti,” Kimiko Hahn
“To find a connectome, or the mental makeup of a person,” researchers experimented with the neurons of a worm then upgraded to mouse hoping “to unravel the millions of miles of wire in the [human] brain” that they liken to “untangling a bowl of spaghetti” of which I have an old photo: Rei in her high chair delicately picking out each strand to mash in her mouth. Was she two? Was that sailor dress from Mother? Did I cook from scratch? If so, there was a carrot in the sauce as Mother instructed and I’ll never forget since some strand determines infatuation as a daughter’s fate.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Six:
Read and Discuss:
“Brownies,” ZZ Packer
Writing Exercise: The First Time You Saw Violence
Read, Aloud:
“Encounter,” Czesław Milosz
“Chuckie,” Victor LaValle
Perspectives on Violence
Listen to:
“Murder Was the Case,” Snoop Doggy Dogg
“Gun Song,” The Lumineers
“The Big Gundown,” John Zorn
Read, Aloud:
“Young Bull,” Jim Harrison
The bronze ring punctures
the flesh of your nose,
the wound is fresh
and you nuzzle the itch
against a fence post.
Your testicles are fat and heavy
and sway when you shake off flies;
the chickens scratch about your feet
but you do not notice them.
Through lunch I pitied
you from the kitchen window—
the heat, pained fluid of August—
but when I came with cold water
and feed, you bellowed and heaved
against the slats wanting to murder me.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Five:
Read and Discuss:
Denis Johnson’s “Car Crash While Hitchhiking”
Denis Johnson’s “Work”
Writing Exercise: The last dream you remember.
Read, Aloud:
“Insomniac,” Sylvia Plath
“The Shortest Night,” Yusef Komunyakaa
“Wedding Picture,” Jayne Anne Phillips
Image Exercise: Perspectives on Dreams
Listen to:
“Something I Dreamed Last Night,” John Coltrane
“Sleep to Dream,” Fiona Apple
“Sweet Dreams,” Beyoncé
Read, Aloud:
“In Praise of Dreams,” Wisława Szymborska
In my dreams I paint like Vermeer van Delft.
I speak fluent Greek and not just with the living.
I drive a car that does what I want it to.
I am gifted and write mighty epics.
I hear voices as clearly as any venerable saint.
My brilliance as a pianist would stun you.
I fly the way we ought to, i.e., on my own.
Falling from the roof, I tumble gently to the grass.
I’ve got no problem breathing under water.
I can’t complain: I’ve been able to locate Atlantis.
It’s gratifying that I can always wake up before dying.
As soon as war breaks out, I roll over on my other side.
I’m a child of my age, but I don’t have to be.
A few years ago I saw two suns.
And the night before last a penguin, clear as day.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Four:
Read and Discuss:
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” Nathan Englander
Read, Aloud:
“The Niagara River,” Kay Ryan
“Upon Viewing a Photograph in Which I Stand in Shadow Behind My Grandmother,” Colleen J. McEllroy
The opening chapter to Don DeLillo’s End Zone.
Image Exercise: Perspectives on Ghosts
Listen To:
“Intensity Ghost,” Chris Forsyth and the Solar Motel Band
“NYC Ghosts and Flowers,” Sonic Youth
“Ghosts,” Albert Ayler
Read, Aloud:
“Ghosts”
Anne Sexton
Some ghosts are women, neither abstract nor pale, their breasts as limp as killed fish. Not witches, but ghosts who come, moving their useless arms like forsaken servants. Not all ghosts are women, I have seen others; fat, white-bellied men, wearing their genitals like old rags. Not devils, but ghosts. This one thumps barefoot, lurching above my bed. But that isn't all. Some ghosts are children. Not angels, but ghosts; curling like pink tea cups on any pillow, or kicking, showing their innocent bottoms, wailing for Lucifer.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Three:
Read and Discuss:
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
Read, Aloud:
“A Kiss,” David Tomas Martinez
“For Sixty Cents,” Lydia Davis
“Enlightened,” Lydia Davis
Image Exercise: Family
Listen to:
“Schizophrenia,” Sonic Youth, Sister
“Cousin Mary,” John Coltrane
Read, Aloud:
“In Praise of My Sister,” Wisława Szymborska
My sister doesn’t write poems. and it’s unlikely that she’ll suddenly start writing poems. She takes after her mother, who didn’t write poems, and also her father, who likewise didn’t write poems. I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof: my sister’s husband would rather die than write poems. And, even though this is starting to sound as repetitive as Peter Piper, the truth is, none of my relatives write poems.
My sister’s desk drawers don’t hold old poems, and her handbag doesn’t hold new ones, When my sister asks me over for lunch, I know she doesn’t want to read me her poems. Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives. Her coffee doesn’t spill on manuscripts.
There are many families in which nobody writes poems, but once it starts up it’s hard to quarantine. Sometimes poetry cascades down through the generations, creating fatal whirlpools where family love may founder.
My sister has tackled oral prose with some success. but her entire written opus consists of postcards from vacations whose text is only the same promise every year: when she gets back, she’ll have so much much much to tell.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Three:
Read and Discuss:
Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”
Writing Prompt: When did you last experience love?
Read:
Grace Paley, “Living”
Matthew Vollmer, “Epitaph XX”
Writing Prompt: What was your first experience with death?
Listen: Perspectives on Death
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Death is Not the End”
Tupac Shakur, “Death Around the Corner”
Slayer, “Angel of Death”
Read, aloud:
“The Death of Fred Clifton”
by Lucille Clifton
I seemed to be drawn
to the center of myself
leaving the edges of me
in the hands of my wife
and I saw with the most amazing
clarity
so that I had not eyes but
sight,
and, rising and turning,
through my skin,
there was all around nit the
shapes of things
but oh, at last, the things
themselves.
Read, aloud:
“Weeds and Peonies”
Donald Hall
Your peonies burst out, white as snow squalls, with red flecks at their shaggy centers in your border of prodigies by the porch. I carry one magnanimous blossom indoors and float it in a glass bowl, as you used to do.
Ordinary pleasures, contentment recollected, blow like snow into the abandoned garden, overcoming the daisies. Your blue coat vanishes down Pond Road into imagined snowflakes with Gus at your side, his great tail swinging,
but you will not reappear, tired and satisfied, and grief’s repeated particles suffuse the air — like the dog yipping through the entire night, or the cat stretching awake, then curling as if to dream of her mother’s milky nipples.
A raccoon dislodged a geranium from its pot. Flowers, roots, and dirt lay upended in the back garden where lilies begin their daily excursions above stone walls in the season of old roses. I pace beside weeds
and snowy peonies, staring at Mount Kearsarge where you climbed wearing purple hiking boots. “Hurry back. Be careful, climbing down.” Your peonies lean their vast heads westward as if they might topple. Some topple.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class Two:
Writing Prompt: What are you most afraid of?
Read: “Fiesta, 1980,” by Junot Diaz
Read: “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie,” by Junot Diaz
Read, out loud: “Layover,” by Charles Bukowski
Read, out loud: “To Be In Love,” by Gwendolyn Brooks
IMAGE Exercise: Wrecking Ball
Listen to: “Wrecking Ball,” by Miley Cyrus
Listen to: “Wrecking Ball,” by Neil Young
“Wrecking Ball”
Kimberly Johnson
With what stern determination I love
That wall!—: its red height so certain I must
Fling myself at it, an erratic
Embarrassment of a fling, chain-wobbling
Through my drunk parabola to kiss
The brick. Can I help it that I kiss
With all my force? Nuzzled
To dust, all my beloveds must wish
To have gone unregarded. What do
I wish for? The end of love.
Open Syllabus, ENG 210W, January 2017, Introduction to Creative Writing
Class One:
Discuss Paul Auster’s short essay “Why Write?”
Read together and discuss: Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “In the Waiting Room” and Raymond Carver’s very short story “Little Things.”
IMAGE exercise: Mars.
Listen to “Mars,” by John Coltrane
Listen to “Helen Forsdale” by Mars
Read together and discuss opening excerpt from Albert Goldbarth’s essay, “Worlds.”
Listen to Nikki Giovanni read “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars)”
“Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars)” By Nikki Giovanni
We’re going to Mars for the same reason
Marco Polo rocketed to China for the same reason Columbus trimmed his sails on a dream of spices for the very same reason Shakelford was enchanted with penguins for the reason we fall in love It’s the only adventure
We’re going to Mars because Peary couldn’t go to the North Pole without Matthew Henson because Chicago couldn’t be a city without Jean Baptiste DuSable because George Washington Carver and his peanut was the right partner for Booker T. It’s a life seeking thing
We’re going to Mars because whatever is wrong with us will not get right with us so we journey forth carrying the same baggage but every now and then leaving one little bitty thing behind: maybe drop torturing hunchbacks here; maybe drop lynching Billy Budd there; maybe not whipping Uncle Tom to death; maybe resisting global war. One day looking for prejudice to slip … one day looking for hatred to tumble by the wayside … one day maybe the whole community will no longer be vested in who sleeps with whom … maybe one day the Jewish community will be at rest … the Christian community will be content … the Muslim community will be at peace … and all the rest of us will get great meals at holy days and learn new songs and sing in harmony
We’re going to Mars because it gives us a reason to change If Mars came here it would be ugly nations would band together to hunt down and kill Martians and being the stupid undeserving life forms that we are we would also hunt down and kill what would be termed Martian Sympathizers As if the Fugitive Slave Law wasn’t bad enough then
As if the so-called War on Terrorism isn’t pitiful now When do we learn and what does it take to teach us things cannot be: What we want When we want As we want Other people have ideas and inputs And why won’t they leave Rap Brown alone The future is ours to take
We going to Mars because we have the hardware to do it … we have rockets and fuel and money and stuff and the only reason NASA is holding back is they don’t know If what they send out will be what they get back So let me slow this down:
Mars is 1 year of travel to get there … plus 1 year of living on Mars … plus 1 year to return to Earth … = 3 years of Earthlings being in a tight space going to an unknown place with an unsure welcome awaiting them … tired muscles … unknown and unusual foods … harsh conditions … and no known landmarks to keep them human … only a hope and a prayer that they will be shadowed beneath a benign hand and there is no historical precedence for that except this: The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans
The people who were captured and enslaved immediately recognized the men who chained and whipped them and herded them into ships so tightly packed there was no room to turn … no privacy to respect … no tears to fall without landing on another … were not kind and gentle and concerned for the state of their souls … no … the men with whips and chains were understood to be killers … feared to be cannibals … known to be sexual predators … The captured knew they were in trouble … in an unknown place … without communicable abilities with a violent and capricious species … But they could look out and still see signs of Home they could still smell the sweetness in the air they could see the clouds floating above the land they loved But there reached a point where the captured could not only not look back they had no idea which way “back” might be there was nothing in the middle of the deep blue water to indicate which way home might be and it was that moment … when the decision had to be made: Do they continue forward with a resolve to see this thing through or do they embrace the waters and find another world In the belly of the ship a moan was heard … and someone picked up the moan … and a song was raised … and that song would offer comfort … and hope … and tell the story …
When we go to Mars … it’s the same thing … it’s Middle Passage When the rocket red glares the astronauts will be able to see themselves pull away from Earth … as the ship goes deeper they will see a sparkle of blue … and then one day not only will they not see Earth … they won’t know which way to look … and that is why NASA needs to call Black America
They need to ask us: How did you calm your fears … How were you able to decide you were human even when everything said you were not … How did you find the comfort in the face of the improbable to make the world you came to your world … How was
your soul able to look back and wonder And we will tell them what to do: To successfully go to Mars and back you will need a song … take some Billie Holiday for the sad days and some Charlie Parker for the happy ones but always keep at least one good spiritual for comfort … You will need a slice or two of meatloaf and if you can man age it some fried chicken in a shoebox with a nice moist lemon pound cake … a bottle of beer because no one should go that far without a beer and maybe a six-pack so that if there is life on Mars you can share … Popcorn for the celebration when you land while you wait on your land legs to kick in … and as you climb down the ladder from your spaceship to the Martian surface … look to your left … and there you’ll see a smiling community quilting a black-eyed pea … watching you descend
It was an honor and a delight to write about Javier Marías and his latest, Thus Bad Begins, for the L.A. Times.
Brand new issue from The Scofield, on Clarice Lispector and The Act of Writing
Read it here: http://thescofield.com/
